Rabbits and Remembrance: More Info than Anyone Asked For about My Obsession with Rabbits

Before I could read, my parents tell me, I had memorized the Tale of Peter Rabbit and could perform it for my relatives upon request. I don’t remember doing this, but I do remember watching a VHS tape of a 1990’s version of the Beatrix Potter story on rainy days. I remember a few years later we got a Peter Rabbit computer game on a CD, which involved helping Benjamin Bunny catch falling turnips in his coat. And over the years we had many picture books detailing the silly stories of Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter.

As a child I loved the story of the Velveteen Rabbit, in which a stuffed bunny is so loved by a child that most of his velvet fur gets rubbed off and his seams break and the satin in his ears goes dull – but the more loved and worn out he is, the more “real” he becomes in a magical sense, until a fairy comes and turns him into a truly real wild rabbit. My mom would take me and my sister to see the ballet performance of the Velveteen Rabbit in San Francisco every Christmas. She would fight to get us to dress up in our Mary Jane shoes, and we would all get on the BART train at West Oakland and embark on a rare adventure to the city. There, the most beautiful dream, that your stuffed animals really MIGHT be real, would be played out to wholesome music and whimsical dance. My best stuffie since I was six is a beautifully made velveteen rabbit that my mom bought me that year at the ballet. I named her Hoppy, and my sister named her own bunny Crystal, and we played pretend with them most days for many years. We would spend hours playing out fabulous scenarios with our stuffed bunnies dressed in doll clothes, saving the world from the forces of evil. 

When I was eight I had become an obsessive bookworm and an aspiring writer. One evening my dad gave me a very old worn out book called Watership Down, in which a group of scared but determined rabbits go on a grand adventure. In order to maintain their courage in the face of many dangers, the rabbits tell each other stories of their folk hero El-ahrairah, and their death god, the Black Rabbit of Inle. This book is the single most thrilling novel I have ever read, and it remains my favorite book to this day. Nothing, I say NOTHING, compares to the terror and elation I felt as Bigwig carried out Hazel’s plan to rescue the rabbits of Efrafa, and then defended their new home on the hills of Watership Down from the tyrant General Woundwort. 

No childhood is perfect, and in many ways the reality of mine does not measure up to my rosy memory. However, whenever I think of who I was when I was a kid, I think of rabbits, books, playing pretend, storytelling, and this sense of wonder, creativity and inspiration that pervaded my mentality, no matter what else was going on.

By the time I was close to adulthood, most of that sense of wonder had faded away. I unexpectedly fell into a long depression at age 15 and I didn’t surface for four years. Many of us know what it’s like to lose oneself in depression, and for me it was a long period of miserable blankness and loneliness. I didn’t like who I was, but I didn’t know how to be different, so I became nothing. I read books and watched tv and hid in the library during lunchtimes at school. What personality I still had I reserved for my summer job, where I was a camp counselor at a sleepaway summer camp.

As a 17 year old camp counselor, I discovered something amazing. There is a kind of love that has nothing to do with how funny you are or how pretty or how accomplished or good at sports or how intelligent. It’s the kind of love that we are born with, and which we often slowly lose as we grow up. The children at summer camp showed me what unconditional love felt like. There was nothing I needed to prove to them, other than that I was a safe place for them to go when they were scared. Discovering this type of love was, as you can guess, a big deal. Memories of summer camp sustained me throughout the years at high school when my depression made me believe I was completely valueless. And as I slowly rose out of my sadness, with the help of new friends in college and seeing my returning camp friends and campers every summer, I started to understand who I was.

I realized that the happy child I had been was still there inside me, and not only was she NOT to be tossed out as time passed like old toys that I no longer played with – that happy child was actually the entire point. Growing up became, for me, a process of remembering my roots, and reconnecting to that deep nature within myself. From that point on, the more personal growth and self-exploration I’ve done, the more I’ve re-connected with that little girl. And I soon understood that rabbits are a through-line for me back to that childhood full of stories of courage, love and whimsy. Rabbits became a symbol of the wholesome authenticity of childhood, the basis of our natural spirits.

Then rabbits sort of became an institution. I started doodling pictures of rabbits in the margins on my notebooks, and got a tattoo of a rabbit on my left shin. I collected artwork that included rabbits, re-read all my old favorite stories, and soon began identifying with rabbits on a more practical level. Rabbits are adorable wild animals who can kick hard and run fast if they need to, though they mostly long for soft warm burrows and someone to snuggle with. Rabbits are lovable and yet misunderstood, sometimes esoteric in their connections with luck, magic and mythology – and then sometimes very classic, like Peter Rabbit with his little blue jacket that his mother made for him. My fixation has been encouraged by anyone who enjoys buying me presents, which often end up being rabbit themed. I now have two rabbit tattoos, and while I do believe there is a limit to how many rabbit tattoos I should reasonably have, I think there is room for a couple more.

More than just being my favorite animal, rabbits are a reminder to me of who I want to be, and the freedom I have to create my life in a way that is authentic rather than formulaic. After many years of feeling deeply lost, I was lucky enough to be able to determine for myself who I wanted to be. And it is simply fun and grounding to have a symbol for myself that reminds me of these things.

What are some through-lines in your life that might be turned into personal symbols?